Your brain is what makes you human. It brings you pleasure, memories, solves your problems, and connects you with Mother Nature. Without memory, we require constant care from family, friends, or total strangers, and we become a burden on the people we love the most, and none of us want that to happen. You can live with a transplanted heart, liver, or other organ, but not without your brain.

And likely the most important factor that impacts whether you brain is functioning optimally, or declining and shrinking, is the food you choose to eat every day.

Do you or your loved ones find yourselves forgetting names of people you know? Where you put your keys, wallet, or glasses? Maybe not able to recall items on your to-do-list after a meeting? How about not able to remember where you parked your car? Even worse, do you have trouble concentrating when you read, so that you have to re-read a passage? If you or a family member have these symptoms, it’s concerning.

Part of the reason memory loss is so scary is that the rate of Alzheimer’s disease is increasing at alarming epidemic rates. In fact, studies show that the number of victims is predicted to increase by 200 percent in just the next 12-14 years! That means double the risk, so when you forget something, naturally your first thought may be, am I losing my memory?

Can a class of drugs commonly prescribed to help lower cholesterol levels protect against breast cancer? A study recently presented at the European Society of Cardiology conference in Barcelona, Spain, offers interesting results.

Researchers from Aston Medical School, Aston University, in Birmingham, United Kingdom, determined that statins can nearly cut the risk of the disease in half, as well as lower mortality rates.

“This is the most conclusive and direct evidence as yet to confirm the link between high cholesterol and breast cancer, a topic that has been fascinating researchers for the past few years,” Rahul Potluri, physician, senior author on the study, said in a press release.

“We previously found an association between having high cholesterol and developing breast cancer, so we designed this study to follow up patients longitudinally and address the relationship more robustly.”(more…)

A new study by researchers at Loma Linda University Health has found that eating nuts on a regular basis strengthens brainwave frequencies associated with cognition, healing, learning, memory and other key brain functions.

An abstract of the study — which was presented in the nutrition section of the Experimental Biology 2017 meetings in San Diego, California, and published in The FASEB Journal — may be accessed online.

Nuts are one of the most nutrient-dense foods available, with an unrivalled unsaturated fatty acid, plant protein, fibre, mineral, vitamin profile. Nuts also contain other bioactive compounds such as phytosterols and phenolic antioxidants.

An impressive array of studies–large and small, from around the world–have now found that people who eat nuts regularly cut their risk of heart disease by as much as half, compared to those who rarely or never eat nuts. Eating nuts daily has been linked to lower all-cause mortality.

In the study — which is titled “Nuts and brain: Effects of eating nuts on changing electroencephalograph brainwaves”– researchers found that some nuts stimulated some brain frequencies more than others. Pistachios, for instance, produced the greatest gamma wave response, which is critical for enhancing cognitive processing, information retention, learning, perception and rapid eye movement during sleep. Peanuts, which are actually legumes, but were part of the study, produced the highest delta response, which is associated with healthy immunity, natural healing, and deep sleep.

The study’s principal investigator, Lee Berk, DrPH, MPH, associate dean for research at the LLU School of Allied Health Professions, said that while researchers found variances between the six nut varieties tested, all of them were high in very beneficial antioxidants, with walnuts containing the highest antioxidant concentrations of all.

Prior studies have demonstrated that nuts benefit the body in several significant ways: protecting the heart, fighting cancer, reducing inflammation and slowing the aging process. But Berk said he believes too little research has focused on how they affect the brain.

“This study provides significant beneficial findings by demonstrating that nuts are as good for your brain as they are for the rest of your body,” Berk said, adding that he expects future studies will reveal that they make other contributions to the brain and nervous system as well.

To gather research data on nut consumption and the brain, Berk — who is best known for four decades of research into the health benefits of happiness and laughter, as well as a cluster of recent studies on the antioxidants in dark chocolate — assembled a team of 13 researchers to explore the effects of regular nut consumption on brainwave activity.

In the introduction to the study, the team noted that different kinds of nuts contain different types of antioxidants. What they didn’t know, however, was whether different nut antioxidants had different modulatory effects on brainwave frequencies response.

To find out, Berk and his colleagues tested the effects of consuming nuts on frequency modulations inside the brain. He said the human brain produces five separate types of waves — delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma — and that each wave produces its own frequency and occupies its own bandwidth. “Sort of like radio stations on a dial,” he said.

The team developed a pilot study using consenting subjects who consumed almonds, cashews, peanuts, pecans, pistachios and walnuts. Electroencephalograms (EEG) were taken to measure the strength of brainwave signals. EEG wave band activity was then recorded from nine regions of the scalp associated with cerebral cortical function.

Michael Samardzija, PhD, JD, associate vice president for research affairs, says Loma Linda University researchers have been discovering the health benefits of nuts for decades. He cites multiple studies conducted by Joan Sabate, MD, DrPH, and other researchers at the School of Public Health, which have demonstrated that nuts promote cardiovascular health, cancer prevention and healthy aging.

“These results coming from Dr. Berk’s research at the School of Allied Health Professions show that nuts can now be considered one of the superfoods helping to support brain health,” Samardzija said.

Ever since chemotherapy and radiation became the ‘standard of care,’ oncology has been in the Dark Ages, often causing more harm and human suffering than it alleviates. Could the scientific community finally be waking up to the incomparable cancer-killing power of foods to cure what conventional treatment only makes worse?

One of the most important discoveries in biology and medicine of the past fifteen years is that cancer stem cells are largely responsible for the failure of conventional cancer treatment. These cells, which represent a small population of tumor cells (~ 1:1000), are cancer cells characterized by stem cell properties such as self-renewal and the ability to give rise to all cell types found in a particular cancer sample. These cells drive tumor development, progression, metastasis and drug resistance and are highly resistant to chemotherapy and radiotherapy

Differences in the bacterial make up of breast tissue in those with breast cancer point to the existence of a “microbiome” within the breast as well as the prospect of probiotic use in the battle against this disease.

Ketosis is a metabolic state in which your body uses fat, rather than sugar, for energy. Your body shifts into ketosis when your blood sugar is low, and the glycogen in your muscles has been depleted. Typically, this happens when you eat a low carb diet or fast from food altogether for a prolonged period. Ketosis is usually heralded as a fast and effective way to lose body fat. Research suggests that ketosis may positively affect health in other ways, as well.

How Does Ketosis Work?

Story at-a-glance

To protect your health, I advise spending at least 90 percent of your food budget on whole foods, and only 10 percent, or less, on processed foods. Twenty-two foods known for their potent health benefits are presented

Research on garlic indicates that it may provide an ideal low-cost and safe alternative to drugs and vaccines in reducing the three most common causes of death in the world.

In a world mesmerized by the false promises of pharmaceutical industry marketing copy, as well as inundated with aggressively marketed dietary supplements, many of which are manufactured by the same companies making a killing off patented chemicals (Bayer owns One A Day, Pfizer owns Centrum), it is reassuring to know that the kitchen pantry will never fail us…

Inexpensive, time-tested, safe and delicious, many spices are attaining recognition for being, quite literally, ‘life saving,’ which is likely one reason why, in ancient times, many were worth their weight in gold.

This time around, the health benefits of ancient ‘folk remedies’ like garlic are being confirmed by straight-laced men and women in lab coats. Which, when it comes to the conventional medical establishment, blighted as it is by the epistemological disease known as myopia, is considered the only valid way to ascertain the truth. Never mind the countless millions of people who, since the beginning of time, have used a different standard of proof: if it works and it is safe, then its true.

We all know that garlic is not shy to make its presence known. The smallest culinary dose is enough to suffuse the entire body with its aroma. Garlic also permeates the research literature: the biomedical database known as MEDLINE, provided by the National Library of Medicine, contains over 5500 study abstracts on garlic, a number of which we have indexed and organized for your use on our site: Health Benefits of Garlic.

Around 2012, and immediately before and after, Health Impact News featured some seriously thought provoking attacks on reigning dogmatic nutritional salt myths. The reports were from several experts such as Dr. Joseph Mercola, Dr. David Brownstein, author of Salt Your Way to Health, and the satirical approach of Scottish M.D. Malcolm Kendrick.

My favorite Health Impact Newsarticle on the matter was by Dr. Kendrick, who explained that the low sodium diets seem to forget that salt is composed of two molecules, salt (Na) and chloride (Cl). The chemical formula for salt is NaCl, or sodium chloride, which is salt.

Then he flashed a study that warned low serum chlorine was more dangerous than previously considered, concluding:

Low, not high Serum Cl- (<100 mEq/L), is associated with greater mortality risk independent of obvious confounders. Further studies are needed to elucidate the relation between Cl- and risk. (Study abstract)

Despite the growing evidence that low sodium causes more harm than high sodium, and using unprocessed salt has more benefits than commercial processed table salt, the mostly unsubstantiated belief that salt needs to be demonized persists. The revelations of good science are continually crushed by the pressures of public health policy.

Traditional fats such as coconut oil and butter are high in saturated fats. Modern processed cooking oil such as corn and soybean oil, the new vegetable oils that are polyunsaturated, have only been in the food chain since World War II, and contain dangerous trans fatty acids.

by Paul Fassa Health Impact News

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is rapidly becoming an international epidemic. The mainstream medical mantra for its underlying cause is “fat consumption.”

However, “fat” is a very general term and does not distinguish between traditional healthy fats and unhealthy modern processed fats and oils. The common belief is that saturated fat is the culprit in fatty liver disease, but a new study published in the July 4, 2017 European Journal of Nutrition comes to a different conclusion.

This peer reviewed study, “Chronic consumption of fructose in combination with trans fatty acids but not with saturated fatty acids induces nonalcoholic steatohepatitis with fibrosis in rats,” examined more closely the effects of trans fatty acids (from vegetable oils derived from corn and soybeans) versus saturated fats, found in traditional fats such as butter, coconut oil, and palm oil.

Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis is basically advanced NAFLD. It has its own acronym, NASH. The word steatohepatitis combines steato, Greek for fat, and hepatitis, liver inflammation. The fat accumulation led to liver inflammation with NASH worsening one’s liver health and leading to cirrhosis of the liver and potential death.

The study’s title gives away their conclusion: fructose is bad for the liver, but it is worse with trans fats than it is with saturated fats.